Subtopic	Posts		Updated
	Calling All Canucks	2		06/05 11:49am

By Cbee (Cbee) on Sunday, June 03, 2001 - 10:20 pm: Edit

well ive searched and searched and searched some more and cant find any info about making a substrae to spawn out of a mix of worm casings and straw, hippie you once said that that is the best youve found, my cakes that i am using for spawn arent quite colonized yet but i wanna get prepped so im ready for them when they are.. could someone tell me if all i have to do is mix a 1:1 ratio of worm castings and straw, pasterized seperately and then mix together and add the PF cake??? this is what i was thinking of doing...

Soaking the straw for 24hrs
pasterizing it for 1-2 hours in 160 degree water
pasterizing the worm castings for 1-2 hours
mixing the pasterized worm castings and straw together in a 5 gallon bucket, putting enough PF cakes crukbled up to mix well with the amount of straw and worm castings in the buxkets, then when its mixed up real good scooping the mix into pans and setting in my terrarium...

Sound good??
thanks

By Poppalarge (Poppalarge) on Sunday, June 03, 2001 - 11:55 pm: Edit

sounds good to me. But I'm not really a pro so...
but hey where did you get the worm casing?

By Hippie3 (Hippie3) on Monday, June 04, 2001 - 02:23 am: Edit

sounds good to me, it's not an exact process so there is margin for variance.

By Cbee (Cbee) on Monday, June 04, 2001 - 05:16 am: Edit

ya, is it better to cook the worm castings in the oven or to pasterize in water???
poppalarge: I think u can get worm castings at any specialty gardening store

By Hippie3 (Hippie3) on Monday, June 04, 2001 - 12:01 pm: Edit

i pasturize in water, but others bake, both work, apparently.

By Gratefulredhead (Gratefulredhead) on Monday, June 04, 2001 - 01:16 pm: Edit

you've got the right idea. here's a reduced version of one i've used with good results:


Pasteurizing the Straw
Get an old pillow case and put straw in it and tie a string around the top of the pillow case to hold it all in.. Put this pillowcase in the base of a large pressure cooker or some other large metal container that can withstand the stove top. Fill this with water and set a weight on top of it to prevent it from floating. You will need to keep the temperature close to (***but definitely less than***) 200f. [i find these temps a little high 160-180 is good] If you go over this you are destined to failure. let it cook in this for 2 hours and make sure there is always a good amount of water in it so it will not burn. A candy thermometer is a good way to tell what temperature it is in the pot, you can buy these at Wal-Mart. After it has been 2 hours take this out and let it cool off *100%* and make sure that is THOROUGHLY DRAINED.
Pasteurizing the Worm Dung
This is pretty simple. The hardest part is getting the water ratio right. Basically use good judgment and make sure you don't make muddy sludge just wet it good but not to where it is dripping and shit. Some recommend putting lime in your worm compost, but it is not a very big deal. Put this wet worm shit into large pie tins, put foil over the tins, and preheat the oven to 175f. Leave the tins in the oven around about 2 hours. Let cool off completely, 100%.
Mixing Spawn into the Substrate
Ok this is another cool part. Take a sterile Rubbermaid clothing bin (again from Wal-Mart) and duct-tape the bottom 6 inches of it to block out light from hitting the substrate from the sides. I recommend 1 full pillow case to a 10 pound bag of compost (they sell them by the 10lb bag at mushroompeople.com) Mix both of these pasteurized substrates into the sterility. Get 2 1/2 gallon jars (a total of 1 gallon of spawn) and mix it into the dung/straw mixture. The take a third 1/2 gallon spawn jar and mix it into 100 worm dung/compost and make a pseudo-casing out of the mixture. [this is pretty forgiving in terms of ratios and so on--feel free to experiment] Let ALL of this colonize 100%, it wont take long AT ALL. After it is colonized 100% case normally with 50/50 or even coco-fiber. Put a light on the sterilite lid and soup the tank up however floats your boat. Growing parameters are the same of course.